March/April 2015

Article Excerpts

Welcome to the Ninth Anniversary Issue of Artscope magazine. Just as it’s been for all New Englanders, these past two months have been challenging, not only in surviving everyday life, but for us in being able to put together the best possible issue regardless of what Mother Nature threw our way — and what barriers she sent us. Margie Serkin was met with heavy snows on two occasions when she tried to travel to the Springfield Museums to review its ...

On a recent snow-bound afternoon, artscope’s Elizabeth Michelman found Brookline, Mass. fiber artist Janet Kawada in her basement studio piecing together cylindrical “homes” with conical roofs from felt she makes herself. Others, fashioned from silk, paper and mink, hung from the ceiling. She had only a month to prepare for her March exhibition at Pine Manor College. For 15 of her 18 years on the Massachusetts College of Art and Design 3-D faculty, Kawada has been teaching “Flexible Structures.” Before ...

Diverse Perspectives at Alumni Biennial Apart from poet Robert Frost, who attended Dartmouth for all of two months, one of the best-kept secrets of this small Ivy League college is its significant number of alumni who go on to notable careers in the arts. Dartmouth’s second Alumni Art Biennial Exhibition, curated by assistant professor of painting Enrico Riley and his classmate, New York multimedia artist Brice Brown, presents a diverse selection of works by 13 alumni-artists in mid-career. The works ...

New Work by Faculty Artists Most gallery talks don’t include the artists devouring doughnut cakes while discussing their work, but the delicious powdery sugar treats were one of the “stars” of the “Pulse” exhibition being discussed by Amy Archambault, Rachelle Beaudoin and Marguerite White, three of the 10 participants in the current exhibition featuring new work by College of the Holy Cross faculty artists. The show has a number of purposes — as an exhibition, it features artists who previously ...

Lesley Connects Campus and Activity The new Lunder Arts Center has arrived. Seven years in the making, the project is “the beginning of the next chapter in the history of the school,” said Richard Zauft, dean of the Lesley University College of Art and Design (LUCAD). Located in Porter Square on Mass. Ave., this 74,000-square-foot building contains both art galleries and studio spaces for LUCAD, formerly known as the Art Institute of Boston (AIB), and is open to the public. ...

Creativity Unfolds in Springfield “Above The Fold: New Expressions In Origami,” currently on exhibit at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, includes diversity in its offerings in order to do justice to the wide variety of approaches to Origami, or “folding,” as it is referred to within the field. From scientific algorithms to political discourse, the impetus to create these works is varied, and the finished pieces are at once representational and interpretive. Origami as ...

Looking Beyond at South Shore Art “Thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.” Curator Bill Houser's exhibition statement for "Forever &amp; After" starts with that quote from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and it’s perfectly apt. The show revolves around the subject of mortality and related themes: death, loss, mourning, commemoration, monument and, as he rather eloquently puts it, “belief in spirit with its uncertain evolution or transcendence.” History, art, literature, religion, song and popular ...

Looking Sharp at the MFA No one can predict the trajectory of a life, especially not an African-American life in the spring of 1950, just months before Brown v. Board of Education. That successful challenge to segregation set off decades of accomplishment and strife that still continue today. But Gordon Parks felt he was up to the job. He had a faith in his own near-mythical trajectory to an appointment as the first black photographer for that ultimate chronicler of ...

From the Historic to the Contemporary The sophistication of ceramics in the New Bedford area owes much to Chris Gustin’s active career as a catalyst of pottery enterprise and the influence of fellow ceramicist James Lawton. Both men have long affiliations with the New Bedford campus of UMass Dartmouth. Its University Art Gallery and Performing Arts Center are located in the UMass Star Store, a large refurbished former department store in New Bedford’s historic downtown. Gustin is a professor emeritus ...

NCECA Conference inspires Galleries, Artists Providence began preparing for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Conference two years ago, winning the coveted role of host with the proposed title “Lively Experiments.” Over 5,000 people will be visiting Providence from March 25-28 for the NCECA Conference, based at the Rhode Island Convention Center. Myriad exhibitions are scheduled throughout the city — and beyond — during March and April to coordinate with this dynamic event, offering collectors and ...

Reliving the Golden Age at the Bruce The work of Caravaggio had a tremendous influence on what would become a golden age in the Netherlands of the 16th Century. Artists flocked to the region — by some estimates as many as 3,000 — and were soon embarking on work that would capture the visible world in myriad ways. These painters moved from then– revered history paintings to specialize in genre paintings, portraiture, landscapes and seascapes. Their still lifes reflected the ...

Jo-Ann Boback and Dave Richardson Luis Villanueva’s Colo Colo Gallery doubled its space in mid-2013 when it moved to the Kilburn Mills, a roughhewned yet industrially elegant exhibition facility that also hosts several other galleries, amidst a collection of working artist studios, in New Bedford’s South End. The added capacity allows Villanueva the ability to present two sizeable solo shows simultaneously. April will feature a three-week untitled exhibition by painter Jo-Ann Boback and furniture maker David Richardson. It is an ...

Elizabeth Atterbury breaks the mold Breaking the mold, metaphorically, is the essence of what Elizabeth Atterbury strives for. An emerging artist who transcends traditional expectations in photography — as well as in her recent inclination to create cut-paper constructions and wooden creations while employing unique raw materials such as cardboard, pumice and sand — she often reverts back to her love of photography by photographing the works she’s created. Her keen sense of form and how it can work hieroglyphically, ...

Dawna Bemis Celebrates her Upbringing Dawna Bemis knows she was blessed with a unique childhood. Four generations of her family thrived in one teeming house- hold, and at any given time when she was growing up, she was surrounded by extended family — cousins, great-uncles, great- grandparents — who virtually took over an entire neighborhood in the tiny mid-Maine town of Veazie. “You can’t throw a rock without hitting relatives of mine up there,” quipped the artist, who has since ...

Matt Brackett's Dichotomy With a poetic and rhythmic title, “Dark Waters/Grateful Daughters” is a wily exhibition that counterpoints two very different groups of paintings, spanning a five-year, highly demanding period in Matt Brackett’s life. “Dark Waters” is a selection from Brackett’s “Dark Animals” series (2009-12), animal-landscape portraits within the realism/naturalism tradition, while “Grateful Daughters” are recent abstracted-tonal, sketch-like unfinished experiments featuring intimate views of flowers in full bloom, originally called “Daughters of Gratitude” (2013-14). The adroit decision to exhibit thesetwo ...

John Econmaki and Bridge City Tool work “Quality is Contagious” showcases the work of industrial designer, innovator and entrepreneur John Economaki, founder of Bridge City Tools of Portland, Oregon. It establishes that hand tools can and should be beautiful to look at and comfortable (ergonomic) to hold, and is appropriately being displayed at Boston’s North Bennet Street School, highly respected as an arts and crafts instructional epicenter providing training in fine craftsmanship and creative entrepreneurship. The exhibition features a selection ...

Marjorie Kaye: Shape Shifter A quote attributed to Gerard Piel, the publisher who revived Scientific American magazine in the middle of the last century, is a perfect springboard for my impression and, I hope, our discus- sion of Marjorie Kaye’s upcoming exhibition at East Boston’s Atlantic Works Gallery. Piel said, “Energy commutes into matter as naturally as matter commutes into energy.” Indeed it does, and nowhere, for me, was this omnipresent transmutation more in evidence than when I sat sipping ...

Keith Maclelland Battles Societal Issues “Monster Cowboys” is the intriguing title that artist and teacher Keith MacLelland uses to describe his current body of work, consisting of exuberantly colorful mixed-media collages, figurative yet abstract, all rendering the theme of “Good Battling Evil.” The impetus of these artworks was originally rooted in wrangler-lore of the American southwest but, alas, no sing-along cowboys ride into the sunset. In his “Hero Cowboys” exhibition at Milton Academy’s Nesto Gallery, MacLelland’s iconographic works are provocative ...

Vivian Pratt Explores Nature's Hidden Frontier It’s well documented in travelers’ diaries that before the Romantic era, the more awe-inspiring aspects of nature provoked shudders; tourists would scurry through the Alps on well-marked trails, looking neither left nor right. But that was then. Today, we include ourselves in the most and the least of nature and are forging a new sensibility, with new outlooks, to explore. Inevitably, this new frontier attracts the bold and the ready which, I would argue, ...

Richard Whitten's Functional Fantasy The structured narratives and toy-like replicas of invention made by artist Richard Whitten ply a complex territory of anachronisms. The artist’s work harbors a density of detail emblematic of Victorian parlor games. In richly hued, technically accomplished, labyrinth-like paintings and clever, delicate, mechanical 3D constructions, the artist frames his conceptual interests to tease with wonder and create situations of puzzlement. They are on display in a solo exhibition from March 6 through April 12 at Helen ...

Christina Zwart Takes the Road Less Traveled It’s a common sight, and one that most of us greet with a flash of revulsion or a quick aversion of the eyes. But when Christina Zwart came upon roadkill during a walk on the Cape a few summers ago, she not only stopped to inspect it — she perceived the beauty in it. A jackrabbit lay on its side, unbloodied, possessing a look of vigor with a “really, really beautiful blue hue ...

Mad Dog Studios has played a pioneering role in the growing Pawtucket arts community by offering artists an affordable place to work on a bi-monthly basis. “Mad Dog March” is a collaborative show being held from March 3 through 29 at the Coastal Living Gallery, 83 Brown St., North Kingstown (Historic Wickford), Rhode Island. Curators Shari Rubeck and Karen Murtha recently chose for the exhibit a selection of sculpture, drawings, ceramics, fiber art, painting and encaustic works made by Mad ...